"The main jaw muscle, the masseter, is responsible for 50% of the tension in our bodies. This is due to its location near the brainstem, where the generation of reflexive and unconscious somatic motor responses are running all the time. As we relax the jaw, the body follows. "

So when we look into the vagus nerve we get plenty of answers. Stressed is not a good look.

 I spent most of September 2017 - through to the present, witnessing how it shows up for me. I had big health issues for most of the summer of 2017. My facebook page 'stress club', back at that time, was a way to explore this and find ways to curb the  inappropriate stress responses to the low level stressors that bombard our systems. By stopping and looking I can to a certain extent calm down those responses. There are of course systems that are out of our control and are on automatic pilot. 

......"Needless to say, when inappropriately prolonged, a ‘fight or flight’ state does the vital organs no good at all. Sadly, modern stressors are not as transient as the threats our SNS evolved to protect us from. Our SNS cannot distinguish between physical and psychological distress [3], so the more transient stressors of the modern age frequently leave people in a prolonged and highly damaging state of persistent low grade ‘fight or flight’. In order to combat this and gain a state of physical and psychological health, we must to bring the body back to a more natural resting state of ‘rest and digest’. This can be achieved through stimulation of the vagus nerve."....

A tendency to TMJ and bruxism means that the jaw is clenched and teeth are constantly grinding in your sleep. I have had this in varying degrees for most of my life. My daughter when she was younger also had this. The dentist would say "What on earth has got this child so stressed". 

She had an MRI to find that TMJ was an issue, and she had a mouthguard to wear to bed, but thankfully she seems to have grown out of it. It must be an inherited response to unseen predators/situations/monsters larger than life, that come out to be explored during our sleep state. We are both 'sensitives' 'empaths' and to varying degrees, 'psychic'. What we can see/feel/experience in different realms, and the ongoing harshness of this 3rd dimensional experience can be difficult to deal with. 

In 2017, The roof of mouth became traumatised as my lower front teeth clawed at it during sleep. Yes, it had been 'a difficult few years'  and yes, I was acutely dealing with many issues and so sadly my health became so low down on the list of priorities.  Putting up with toxicity is my speciality, its like a game I like to play, how much I can go through before I go under.

So from September, I withdrew gradually, to living nearly a hermits lifetstyle in Feb and March 2018.
Allowing the incoming energies to do their thing practically Unhindered by the extraneous strangulations of living in the 3rd dimensional insanities. And, the icing on the cake, I  have only just got around to the dentist to be fitted for a mouthguard for sleeping.

My exploration of my own stress response now completes with information of the vagus nerve, and a few days ago I started wearing a mouthguard.

 I could feel that my 'jaw clenching' was arrested, as the nerves in my mouth became aware of new and 'interesting' stimulation, a new sensation,  a preventative 'soft but sturdy device',  that seems to stand guard in my mouth, preventing the automatic clenching and grinding, by stancing  between the lower and upper jaw.  I have only worn my mouth a few days but I notice that my mouth responds to it and no longer wants to clench my jaws. My 'Bite' is being raised at night and is being trained that it no longer needs to clench. I notice that my jaw 'likes' being unclenched; the automatic response is being neutralized. 

It could be that this is working to produce new pathways that loop back into other reponses as well. I am not an expert, but I don't think its a one way response, its a two way thing that spills out into the other nerve responses. Once habituated in automatic response, that  habit takes over and gains ground affecting all other response. 

If the brain loop that recognises that 'jaw clenching and teeth grinding' means danger of incoming hostiles, then that signal tells 'everything in the body that danger is present, affecting sleep states and then awake states. So even when danger is not obvious, there is carried around knowledge of  a low level threat that the body continues to respond to. So in this case, take out the jaws ability to clench and pretty soon it relaxes. The brain then is released from responding to the low level threat and 'ease' can spread through the body because the ultra sensitive 'warning triggers' have been neutralised.

 It could also be true to say that maybe, for me, the stressors i.e the inconming hostiles (monsters, situations etc) have finally been erradicated and erased and so the stress response is required to be neutralised.  

Michaela.

also see

https://www.rosewatercranio.com/single-post/2016/02/03/Jaw-TMJ-Pain-ToDo-List

Soothing Jaw Pain, soothing stress

December 4, 2015

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Broehe Karpenko, LMP, CCSP